“ ‘You shall not lie carnally with your neighbor’s wife, and defile yourself with her.
Not to commit adultery with another man's wife
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאֶל־אֵשֶׁת עֲמִיתְךָ לֹא־תִתֵּן שְׁכָבְתְּךָ לְזָרַע לְטָמְאָה־בָהּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מגלות ערות אשת איש. והוא אמרו יתעלה ואל אשת עמיתך לא תתן שכבתך לזרע. ובעונש העובר על לאו זה יש הפרש. וזה שאשת איש אשר היתה נערה מאורשה שניהם חייבים סקילה כמו שבאר הכתוב. ואם היתה בת ישראל ובעולה שניהם חייבין חנק, ואם היתה בת כהן ובעולה דינה בשריפה, והוא בחנק ר"ל הבועל. וזה כשנחקרה העדות, ואם לאו הנה הוא בכרת, וזה אם היה מזיד. ואם היה שוגג יקריב חטאת קבועה. וכבר נכפלה האזהרה בזה והוא אמרו לא תנאף רוצה בו שלא לגלות ערות אשת איש. ולשון מכילתא לא תנאף למה נאמר לפי שהוא אומר מות יומת הנואף והנואפת עונש שמענו אזהרה מנין תלמוד לומר לא תנאף. אחד האיש ואחד האשה ולא כמו ואל אשת עמיתך כי היא האזהרה שאינה כוללת נואף ונואפת אבל היא האזהרה לנואף בלבד, וכן בשאר העריות אי אפשר להם מבלתי שיוציאו לאשה גם כן מאמרו לא תקרבו לגלות ערוה הרי כאן שנים להזהיר האיש על ידי האשה והאשה על ידי האיש. ובגמרא סנהדרין (דף נ"א:) אמרו הכל היו בכלל הנואף והנואפת הוציא הכתוב את בת כהן לשריפה ואת נערה המאורשה לסקילה. וכבר קדם לנו באור זה הענין בפתיחת המאמר (שרש ד'):
He prohibited us from sexual intercourse with a married woman. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And to the wife of your kinsman do not give your lying for seed to become unclean to her" (Leviticus 18:20). And there are distinctions about the punishment for one that transgresses this negative commandment: And that is that [in a case of] a married woman that was [just] a betrothed maiden, both of them are liable for stoning, as Scripture explained. But if she was fully married: If she was an Israelite and fully married, they are both liable for strangulation. However if she was the daughter of a priest and fully married, her law is [the punishment of] burning, and he - meaning the one who had intercourse [with her] - is [punished] with strangulation. And that is when the testimony is ratified. But if he was inadvertent, he must sacrifice a fixed sin-offering. And the prohibition about this was already repeated with His saying, "you shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:13) - meaning to say with this, not to have sexual intercourse with a married woman. And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 20:13:2) is, "'You shall not commit adultery' - why is it stated? Since it states, 'The adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death' (Leviticus 20:10), we understand the punishment. From where [do we know] the prohibition? [Hence] we learn to say, 'You shall not commit adultery.' It is the same for the man and for the woman." And this is not like, "And to the wife of your kinsman" - for that is a prohibition that does not include an adulterer and an adulteress, but is a prohibition for the adulterer alone. And likewise with the other sexual prohibitions. It was impossible that they not derive [the prohibition] also for the woman, from His saying, "you (plural) shall not approach to uncover [their] nakedness" (Leviticus 18:6): "Behold there are two (it is plural)! To prohibit a man with a woman and a woman with a man" (Sifra, Acharei Mot, Chapter 13:1). And in the Gemara, Sanhedrin (Sanhedrin 51b), they said, "All [adulterers] were included in, 'The adulterer and the adulteress.' Scripture singled out the daughter of a priest for burning, and the betrothed maiden for stoning." And the explanation of this matter has already been discussed in the introduction to this essay.
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
- Death by strangulation (ḥenek)
At the hands of Heaven
- Karet — being 'cut off'
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 4:17-21 read it more strictly
- 11QT (Temple Scroll) 66:8-11 affirmed it
Rabbinic aggadah
- Leviticus Rabbah 23:12 expanded it homiletically
- Numbers Rabbah 9 (on Sotah) expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Decalogo 121-131 rationalized it
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.52-63 read it more strictly
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.274-275 affirmed it restatement within the legal summary; the fuller marital-law treatment appears in the broader context of Antiquities book 4
- Against Apion 2.199-201 rationalized it addresses Mosaic marital and sexual law broadly (procreative purpose of intercourse, marital regulations) with only a passing reference to adultery rather than as a discrete topic
The New Testament
- Matthew 5:27-28 read it more strictly extends prohibition to lustful intent ('adultery in the heart')
- John 7:53-8:11 reinterpreted it pericope adulterae; suspends capital enforcement (textually disputed/late)
- Romans 7:2-3 The catalog describes this reception as: illustrative analogy uses adultery analogy to illustrate binding/release of law rather than affirming the statute itself
The Church Fathers
- Augustine, De Sermone Domini in Monte 1.12.36 read it more strictly
- Tertullian, De Pudicitia 6 read it more strictly
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 17:32 carried a parallel
- Q 24:2 carried a parallel, with divergence
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi adultery as offense against husband; death by drowning with husband's right to pardon Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §129 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws husband's discretionary right to punish/mutilate both offenders Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §§13-16 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws adultery as property offense; husband's right to determine punishment Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§197-198 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna death penalty for a contractually married woman found in sexual relations with another man Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §28 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- egyptian negative confession self-exculpatory confession of sexual fidelity Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Declaration of Innocence ('I have not committed adultery / had sexual relations with another man's wife') Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (1972)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Mishnah Sanhedrin 11:1 and b. Sanhedrin 52b prescribe death by strangulation (ḥenek) for adultery; modern penal proportionality theory precludes capital punishment for offenses that, however harmful to the parties, involve consensual adult conduct and create no risk of physical harm to third parties.
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Article 6
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 6 limits capital punishment to the most serious crimes, defined in international jurisprudence as offenses involving intentional killing; application of the death penalty to adultery — a non-violent, consensual act between adults — falls outside the permissible scope of capital punishment under international human rights law.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that capital jurisdiction lapsed with the Sanhedrin's loss of authority following the Temple's destruction; the de jure death penalty for adultery has not been enforceable within Jewish legal institutions for approximately two millennia, though it remains the nominal biblical norm.